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themselves with lamps like miniature searchlights; these shone on the walls of the anterooms through which we passed to reach the galleries, showing them to be so closely covered with frescoes – mostly in excellent condition after sixteen centuries – as to give the impression of colossal ikons. We were instantly confronted with the purpose for which the catacombs had been designed. Rows of niches forming burial chambers had been cut one above the other in the walls, and all these were crammed with skeletons, many said to have been plague victims of the sixteenth century. When somebody picked up a skull to examine it the angry monk trudging at our heels roared at him to put it back. Questioned about the possibility of Germans being in the catacombs, this man had answered in an evasive and suspicious way.
    It soon became clear that we were looking for a needle in a haystack. We were in narrow, bone-choked streets, with innumerable side turnings to be explored, each with its many dark chambers in any one of which our quarry could have hidden, or from which they could have suddenly sprung out to ambush us, if they were still alive. These men, had they gone into the catacombs – and we were all still convinced they had – must have been in the darkness for nearly a fortnight since their torch batteries had finally given out. After which, groping their way, or crawling about among the bones, they would have encountered terrible hazards. Even in the second gallery we came suddenly to a black chasm. In the depths of this, where the whole roadway from wall to wall had caved in, the lights showed us a pile of dust from which protruded a few ancient rib-bones. We dangled a microphone into this pit and listened while the monk muttered at our backs, but the silence below was absolute.
    We gave up and went back. It was two days now since the last knocking had been reported, and strange that the strength of men, however close to starvation, should have ebbed so suddenly that we could hear not even a moan or cry. The general opinion was that the monk knew more than he was prepared to say. There was even the possibility, the Police Commissario suggested, that he had gone into the catacombsand rescued the Germans. Whether or not this was so, it was unlikely that we should ever know.
October 15
    Among the civilian contacts of these first few days, my prize acquisition was Vincente Lattarullo, a man steeped in the knowledge of the ways of Naples.
    When originally asked what was his business with us, he answered in a dry whisper, ‘I am motivated by a passion for justice,’ and, saying this, he appeared to vibrate. It turned out that this distinguished, fragile-looking man, who sometimes halted in mid-sentence and swayed a little, as if about to faint, wished to denounce the activities of an American requisitioning officer who was going round offering Italian car-owners a guarantee against their cars being requisitioned on payment of 100,000 lire. We told him that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
    I took him to the Bar Vittoria next door for a marsala all’uovo , but when the barman brought the egg to be broken into his glass I saw the anguish in Lattarullo’s face, and stopped him in mid-action. Apologies streamed forth and then Lattarullo begged to be allowed to take the egg home. Moments later the impact of the alcohol on an empty stomach set him swaying again and I realised that the man was starving. Unfortunately there was no food of any kind anywhere within range, except the prized and precious eggs, rationed on a basis of one per day to favoured customers. However, Lattarullo was prevailed upon to accept my egg as well, which he beat up in a cup, and swallowed very slowly there and then.
    He proved to be one of the four thousand lawyers of Naples, ninety per cent of whom – surplus to the needs of the courts – had never practised, and who for the most part lived in extreme penury.